


Roll of the Dice

by redlipstickkisses (owldork1998)



Series: what happens in Creyca [5]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types, Original Work
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Betrayal, Child Abuse, Crimes & Criminals, Discussion of Abortion, Doubt, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Constipation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Familiars, Giving birth in the middle of battle, Grief/Mourning, Home Invasion, It's Not Paranoia If They're Really Out To Get You, M/M, Magic, Magical Realism, Miscarriage, Organized Crime, Other, Past Sexual Abuse, Physical Abuse, Post-Apocalypse, Robbery, Slavery, Trans Character, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, Unplanned Pregnancy, Written for a Class, bad break ups, but like fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-24 13:19:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 6,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19724458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owldork1998/pseuds/redlipstickkisses
Summary: The Storyteller smiles and lets the dice fall.Marisha Trall was born a bastard child in a field of bones, her inheritance nothing but hunger and grief, there was never a chance of this story ending well.





	1. Tell me a story

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this back in october for a class and put off posting it because there was something I didn't want to spoil for my players, now that Marisha has been introduced I figured I'd publish it.

Kes woke up alone in a back room. He couldn't move his legs. 

When he tried, pain surged up his spine and he clamped down on the pained noise that tried to escape, tucking it behind his pointed teeth. The miscarriage had hurt more. He let out a hissed breath and opened his eyes enough to see through his eyelashes. He’d been moved. He didn't know how or when or why. All he remembered was casting a spell and then the world went blank. The pain had been so intense he hadn't even realized he had hit the floor. 

He could feel the bed beneath him. It was softer than the floor he usually slept on, but not by much. The sheets scratched against his skin and his back throbbed as he turned his head to the side. The room was empty. No furniture. No window. Just the uncomfortable bed he was trapped on and blank walls taunting him. 

He ached at the solitude. At least the last time he had ended up at a healer’s Spero had been with him. His fingers twitched, longing to run through the soft tickle of her feathers. But Spero wasn't perched beside him like she always was. She was gone, vanished from the material plane by a lucky shot. Nothing but a thought until he could summon her back from the fey-wild. 

Spero would come when he called, but, when would he be able to call for her? And why did each solitary waking feel more and more like a  knife to the chest?

He missed Spiro-though he didn't miss 20 pounds of jackal pinning him to the bed-, he missed Mordai. He knew that Spiro went where Mordai went and Mordai wouldn’t have been allowed to sit by his bedside; the Harvesters were always busy, searching for unclaimed farms and new conscripts, it would be a miracle if Mordai had managed to slip away to visit him all the time. But the fact that Mordai hadn’t come to see him  _ once,  _ and he hadn’t seen so much as a glimpse of Spiro, stung. He hoped that Mordai was avoiding him, or was too busy to see him. (His traitorous thoughts whispered that Harvesters’ died young and messy and if Kes had been injured what had happened to Mordai? Surely he’d have visited by now if he was able to.) His back ached and his skin itched and all he wanted was to hold Mordai. To fall asleep next to him, to kiss him until the never fading darkness fell away. 

He wanted to believe the best but he had never seen much use in that. The gods didn’t help you when you were living in a gutter and they didn’t care if you upgraded to a bed. The only one who cared about you was yourself and hope was a dangerous luxury. 

Once, after the miscarriage Kes had asked why people bothered with hope at all. Mordai had laughed, tears in his eyes, before kissing him breathless. 

_ One day Kitten, I'll show you why we bother with hope. _

Kes held his breath for a long moment before letting it go. Mordai had made good on his promise. Every time Kes closed his eyes he hoped that Mordai would be there when he opened them and every time he opened them there was no one there. It burned. It hurt more than the open wound of his back, more than the way Mordai had set him on fire back when they had first met, more than the dread of a new life completely dependant on you and the sick relief when that life was snuffed out. It clawed at the remnants of his happiness, his loyalty, his love, until the only thing left was god’s damned, untouched,  _ hope _ . 

It took a week, of hoping and praying and grieving, before he finally saw another face, but at least it was a familiar one. Læra hovered over him, an unfamiliar wood elf lurking behind her. His heart beat in his throat. Horrible, traitorous, hope bloomed in his chest. They had saved him. He wasn’t just collateral. 

Læra’s voice seemed harsher than it had before. They had successfully taken the orchard and Madame Gardener was pleased at having a new source of fruit. It was good news, the more farms and orchards under Madam Gardener’s control, the more they were paid. The more they had to eat. Kes’ stomach growled, cramping at his weeklong fast. But Læra’s voice was a raging hurricane instead of the gentle clang of windchimes. She was angry and soon Kes was too.

The last words Mordai had said to him were  _ I'm never going to speak to you again.  _ In a back room, helpless, hungry and terrified and hurt and so utterly, completely  _ alone _ , Kes realized he wasn’t lying when he said them. 


	2. before it all ends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh my Darling, is this a tragedy or an origin story? It's too soon to say. Forget the raging inferno; an avalanche will just have to do.

There’s a special kind of pain that comes from discovering someone you love didn't love you the way you needed them to. Not enough to stay. Not enough to take you with them. Not even enough to wait until you opened your eyes before they vanished into the never ending night. 

Whatever  _ maybe _ Kes and Mordai had, it hadn't been enough.

The knowledge sat in Kes’ chest like a bruise. It broke every wall and sunk its claws into him. His rib cage was cracked open, his heart torn in two; ripped apart like a pomegranate. Everything was spilling out, exposed ruby red seeds offered up to an impatient, careless, child. 

It was the day the moon disappeared from the sky, unanticipated and disorienting, a warning of something worse to come. 

It was a little like grief and a lot like betrayal and it left him as raw as the burns on his back. 

Soon, the tear tracks would dry, and then the only thing left was to burn. Burn brighter than the wildfire of pain holding him hostage and cauterize the wound. To set fire to the past and rise from the ashes, a phoenix in all but name. 

The problem was, Kes was no longer who he used to be. But he wasn’t quite who he  _ needed _ to be.  ~~Fire had always been Mordai’s area of expertise~~. Kes was a creature of permafrost and blizzards, and he didn’t burn easily.  Slow to trust. Slow to love. Glaciers only travel a few inches but when they do they move mountains. 


	3. Something that’s wonderful, something pretend

The wood elf glared at him from the doorway as Læra left. He could see the way their stare flickered over his black skin, his white eyes. The way his long hair tangled on the pillow, white on white. The small freckles of scales dusted over his skin and the way his frozen tears melted down his cheeks. The longer they glared, the deeper the sneer on their face became. They hissed at him, the elvish biting and a familiar type of strange. “You get one more day. Not a moment longer  _ drow-halfbreed. _ ” 

It wasn’t the first time his heritage had been thrown in his face like a curse. It wouldn't be the last either. But it was the first time he’d been so utterly dependent on the person looking at him like scum on their shoe. 

He couldn’t fight back. He needed to leave. He needed to get back and prove to the Harvesters-to  _ Læra _ -that saving him  twice now and he owed them his life, now he owed them his soul was the right choice to make. There was a healing potion in his pouch; he just had to reach it.

When he tried to stand he collapsed to the ground, too stunned to scream. Fire flared along his spine where it was never meant to be, as he slowly pulled himself across the floor. Tears dripped down his face instead of freezing like they'd always done. It took him hours before he managed to find the small vial tucked in the bottom of his pouch, hidden underneath his spare spell components.

He had been saving it in case Mordai needed it and look where that got him.

It slid down his throat like ice. Soft and familiar and numbing. Fresh tears froze against his skin as quickly as they welled up. The low light turned them to diamonds tangling in his eyelashes. The pain vanished as fast as a fire in a blizzard. Snuffed out. The only sign of its presence was the scars on his back, as out of place as soot-stained snow. He lay there on the ground and breathed easily for the first time in a week.

Kes made his way out of the rundown apothecary as quietly as possible. If the healer saw him, they let him go without a word, glad to be rid of him. The stars shone in the darkness, scattered across the darkness above him like a million wizards had cast  _ dancing lights _ . He looked skyward, instinctively searching for the sun that no longer lit the sky. Somewhere in the town a bell tolled 3 times. 


	4. Give it a moral

It was early afternoon but you wouldn’t know it. Can you still call it day if the sun was nine years gone? 

Poor lost soul, how do you know the sun was ever there to begin with? 

How do you know it wasn’t one of the lies you told yourself? 

Love and the sun these days are nothing more than pretty fiction. 

Nothing matters now that the sun was gone, only that it had taken the light with it. 


	5. and maybe a lie

There was a soft sound and Kes turned to face it. His eyes scanned his surroundings, finding nothing, and he went to continue on. There was a flicker of movement in the corner of his vision and he turned quickly on his heel, arm coming up to block a blow that never came. The darkness was weighted with a tense silence. Kes saw a shadow positioned between the apothecary and the dark house next to it. He took a step forward and stopped. He knew those eyes. 

Spiro watched him in the silence. Kes’ breath caught in his throat. He may not have been in his preferred form but Spiro was  _ here _ . Surely Mordai couldn't be far away. For a dizzying moment Kes wanted to run to Spiro, to have him lead him to Mordai, find him and-

Hope sickened in his stomach. Mordai couldn't be far away, but Mordai  _ left _ . Left Kes, left the  _ Harvesters _ . 

What would he have to do if the Harvesters found out he knew Mordai’s location? There was a reason deserters never lasted long. What would he even say if he found him,“A note would have been nice”? Heart in his stomach, Kes turned his back on the unmoving Maine Coon watching him. Its eyes were bright in the dark. Without a word, Kes made his way down the road. Hollowness cradled the too small corpse of hope in his chest. 

It was just a stray cat.


	6. Fill me with laughter, then make me cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for some reason the format of this chapter came out wonky sorry about that, it should be fixed now

The house the Harveters had chosen for base was cramped, three people or more to a room, with only one bed in the entire place. The outside wasn’t much better, on the shabby side of utterly nondescript. The goliath standing guard by the front door ruined the facade of subtly. Ema watched him approach, a knife the size of a short sword flashed in the lantern light as she cleaned under her nails. She seemed to loom out of the darkness but looking menacing wasn't hard when you were over 8ft tall and could bench press a firblog. Her voice was the rumble of thunder crashing overhead. “Thought you died.”

  
Kes smiled, thin and brittle as the long ago spring ice. “Just a close call.”

  
The silence stood for a moment, heavy as a giant and as immovable as a cliff. Kes suppressed the urge to fidget under Ema’s steady gaze. “Is Læra in?”  
Ema shifted, pushing gracefully away from the wall she had been leaning against and stood to her full height. She eyed him for a second and then ducked through the door. He followed her in. The buzz of conversation died as Iane, Jenna, and Sam look up from where they had been fighting over their game of Blackat’s Blessing. Iane had her dagger in hand and as her eyes tracked Kes it looked like she was calculating the effort of stabbing him in the back. She didn’t move but her dagger danced in her fingers as she twirled it. The group’s eyes followed him as he trailed behind Ema into Læra’s room.

Læra sat cross-legged on the bed, paper strewn in a circle around her. A smile spread across her face when Kes entered. Fear settled like a rock in his gut. He didn't like the look of that at all.

  
Læra patted the mattress, “Sit, talk with me.” Gingerly Kes settled himself on the edge. Læra’s eyes were cold, calculating, “Erdith told me she noticed something odd while she was looking after you. Tell me Kes, did you know you were pregnant?”

Kes felt like a fireball to the face would have been less stunning. “But-you know what happened in Wunjo. Taylor told me that I couldn’t carry a pregnancy to term.”  
Læra drew a knee up and propped her arm against it, letting her chin rest on her gentle fist as she watched. “Taylor said it was unlikely that you would ever carry to full term, and yet here you are, 6 months along and just starting to show.”

Kes gently pressed a hand to his stomach. It was firm but that could have easily been the malnutrition, it was the unmistakable curve that gave it away. He choked on his tongue. Læra’s eyes were narrowed as she continued, “It’s too late to make you get rid of it. You can keep it, but know that if you aid Mordai, desert or betray us, both lives are forfeit. Your rations and duties will remain the same.”

Kes nodded, heart in his throat.


	7. You know how it starts

True to her word Læra didn’t change his schedule, sending him out with groups even as his stomach swelled. Mordai had been gone 3 and a half months when Kes felt a sharp pain in the middle of a raid. He doubled over, dropping to a knee as he clutched his stomach. He couldn’t breathe as he cast  _ ice storm _ , the sharp ice spiraling out around him. He screamed as the pain rippled through him again. Something was wrong.

He could hear screaming coming from the blizzard he had surrounded himself with but he couldn’t tell who it was. Was it companions falling to friendly fire or the unreasonably stubborn druid they were confronting? Or perhaps it was the druid and their party falling? Kes couldn’t focus, to distracted with the pain forcing the air from his lungs. The voices had stopped. 

He screamed and pushed and cried as he panted through his labor. He was surrounded by ice, dead bodies, and an ominous kind of silence. When he first saw her he thought she was dead. She was to still, too quiet, and then she screamed, choking on the fluid in her throat. 

Marisha Trall was born a bastard child in a field of bones, her inheritance nothing but hunger and grief, there was never a chance of this story ending well.


	8. "once" and then "time"

The north was a frozen desert and Kes hated it. The only trees were scruffy, twiggy things full of spikes and he had already walked into at least 3 separate cacti because they were too small to see in the dark. 

The Harvesters here eyed him with the violent wariness of a street dog ready to defend its meal of scraps, conversation dropping as soon as he was in earshot. Harvesters who had been at eachothers throats a moment before turned to eye the stranger as Kes passed.

He hadn't felt this alone since  ~~Mordai left, since Læra looked him in the eye and took Marisha from his arms, since “I’m going to send her somewhere safe” as if Kes didn’t know the kind of things the Harvesters used children for~~ he lived on the streets, but at least it was a familiar experience. It was easy to fall back into old habits. He hid what little food he was given and slept with his back to the wall. He recalled Spero and she glared up at him from his cupped hands before perching on his head. When the others laughed at her diminutive size, he transformed her into a blood hawk as big as a halfling. The weak didn't last long nowadays and the Harvesters were experts at weeding them out. Kes Trall was anything but weak. 

(He found himself turning to ask Mordai something, or to share a joke, or a secret smile; he found himself listening for Marisha and everytime the only thing that greeted him was their absence. It felt like picking at a scab, compulsive and destructive. Kes Trall was not weak but I never said that his strength wasn’t a brittle thing.)

He sent Spero out to search for Spiro and Mordai occasionally but there was no sign of them. A part of him ached at their absence, but he didn't know what he would do if he actually saw them. The Harvesters were not kind to deserters. Seeing Mordai again was nothing but a vain hope.


	9. And don’t worry much if it doesn’t all rhyme

He startled awake when Ald kicked him. She was frowning down at him in a way that made his hand fly to his dagger. Her eyes narrowed as she crossed her arms, her mouth curling down in a haughty sneer. “Get up, we have a mission.” 

Message delivered, she turned her back to him. Kes was struck by the reckless, dangerous, ludicrous desire to stab her, but he knew she was expecting it. She was too fast to hit. He stood from his place on the floor and snapped his fingers. Spero appeared and perched on the house’s single, rickety chair. The wood creaked under her weight. 

Kes double checked his pouch, breathing a sigh of relief when he found nothing missing. He rubbed his thumb over the smooth surface of the pebble. Thunderstone was expensive and tempting to any rouge who knew of it. He wouldn’t have put stealing it past her. He wouldn’t put anything past anyone.

The base was oddly silent. Outside Ald’s frown and three others waited. Aund was fiddling with the old beaded necklace around his neck like he was nervous. Bay and Ian had crossbows slung over their shoulders and stood just a little too close together. 

Kes flashed a smile. It wasn't friendly. 

The trek out into the middle of nowhere was tense. Ald wouldn't let any of them see the map and shared the other information like it was ears of corn. She let Kes carry the letter they were supposed to deliver after the mission but he couldn't open it without disturbing the magical seal that would start its self immolation. Bay had the dubious honor of carrying the snake.

Even with the secrets and mistrust and half-knowledge they found the orchard fairly easily. The only resistance they encountered was a sentry tree guarding the back property line. It was unnervingly simple to make it past. A single  _ ray of frost _ stalled it long enough for Ald to yell the command word. 

The Noho house was more of a warren than a house, built into a hill with its floors creating a downward spiral. The guard dog had been easy to knock out and remove, the family was even easier. Kes only had to cast  _ sleep _ and they collapsed to the ground. One of the daughters almost landed in the hearthfire. Kes didn’t say anything.

The Noho’s were short, as halflings often were, but taller than they would have been if they were full blooded. They were also fucking heavy. 

It took longer than it should've to drag them to the cellar, even though the rooms ran together in an unbroken slant. Exhausted, Kes sank to the floor and let his eyes fall closed for a moment. They snapped open when he heard someone take a step in his direction. Ald smiled insincerely as she raised her hands in mock surrender and laced them behind her head. Her hair had frizzed into a black cloud around her face and her lip was split, her nose bloody from the single hit the Sentry tree had gotten in. Her teeth were red and the look in her eyes was calculating. 

Kes didn't close his eyes again. When every hand hid a knife to the back paranoia was a necessity. He sent Spero to watch the second sentry tree that guarded the long road into town and settled in for an uneventful, exhausting, week.


	10. Throw in some danger, then throw a rope

Kes swore as he tackled the youngest daughter into the hard dirt wall. She struggled, kicking and scratching at him before he managed to daze her. She shook her head violently as if that would clear the fog from her brain, but she just ended up looking nauseous. In the light of the torches, Kes realized like a kick in the gut, her dark hair looked almost blue. 

_ Blue hair black with moisture face scrunched in a scream, blue hair spread across a pillow one of the rare times they got to sleep in a real bed, blue hair tangling in his hands as he pulled Mordai in closer, blue hair turned almost black in the darkness, bluehairblueskinblueeyes like the ocean come to life, as soft as frost as he kissed his way down- _

“Bay,” he snapped, “Get the chains.” The Harvesters mostly used rope with captives rather than chains because it was easier to transport. Easier to escape if you were determined. There was a reason they always carried enough chains to restrain a half orc, it would be more than enough for a single bullheaded halfling.

It took more than an hour of fighting to get the upper hand and by the time they had returned her to the cellar in chains the side of her face was a lurid green and purple bruise. Her sister spat at them as they rebuilt the barricade. 

For the first time in a long time, Kes felt guilty. It sat in his throat like a stone and made it hard to swallow. He ignored it. Chains and a bruise were better than what Læra would do for less.

**_Mine!-Beloved-Mineminemine_ ** twisted suddenly into his thoughts as Spero took flight. Kes grabbed hold of their bond and in the next breath, opened Spero’s eyes. Below him a group of adventures were attempting to set the second sentry tree on fire. He let out a breath and stepped back into his own body. “Ald,” he called in an unwavering voice, “we've got company.” 


	11. Lace it with irony, dose it with hope

Kes watched through Spero’s eyes as the adventurers approached the ambush. He saw Ald hit the tiefling in the arm, causing them to twist away as they clutched at their injury. Kes swore when he saw their face. It couldn't be. If it was, this mission hadn't gone downhill, it was a _ sinkhole _ . Bay and Ian fired their crossbows as the one in the plague doctor regalia pulled Not-Mordai out of the path of fire. He watched as-  _ It can't be _ -Mordai sent a fireball into the trees causing Ald and the others to abandon their perches, Ald preparing to engage, Ian attempting to put out Bay’s flaming clothes. 

Ald was being reckless. Their position had been given away and they had lost the height advantage. They should have regrouped and attempted to attack them further down the road. That is, if they didn’t retreat.

The half elf with the tattoos cast something and Ald fell to the ground, laughing so hard she couldn't breathe. Kes held his breath as the half-orc raised their axe, and breathed a sigh of relief when they got tangled with the human fighter’s whip. He was vaguely amused that they had manage to tangle themselves with their faces so close together, but it wasn't the time for laughter. The plague doctor lashed at Ian. Ian blocked it at the last second and a huge slash opened along the length of his forearm. He looked like he was trying to retreat but the halfling stabbed him in the gut with some kind of glowing dagger and he fell to the ground.

The group seemed like they were having some kind of argument as they fought and the halfling tackled the gnome, holding them to the ground. Bay tackled - _ please don't let it be _ \- the tiefling and the fire on his clothes was snuffed out as the half orc hauled him up off - _ if there's any mercy in the world let me be wrong _ \- Mordai and dangled him three feet in the air. 

Dread filled him as he watched the half elf shoot Ald right through the throat and called for Spero with a desperation he’d rarely felt. They were too close for him to retreat and he couldn't beat them alone, not with only Aund for backup. The tiefling turned and Kes had just enough time to feel the thrill of  **_Mine-Beloved_ ** that raced through his bond with Spero before the fireball hit. 

Kes was thrust back into his own mind as Spero returned to the fey-wild, her body destroyed. He swore. They were running on non-existent time and failure was not an option, not if they wanted to live. 

The window in the kitchen smashed open and there was a scream. Kes swore under his breath. They were here and the snake wouldn’t stop them for long. There was another crash and a thud followed by the murmur of whispered conversation. Kes steeled himself and faced the gentle slope up to the kitchen, preparing a spell. The gnome peaked conspicuously around the corner and Kes released it. There was the sound of six bodies hitting the ground, and then silence. 

Kes rounded the corner and felt the barely healed scabs of grief ripping open. 

"You fuck,” he whispered, staring at Mordai’s unconscious body. Behind him Aund made a small sound of what was probably fear. Quickly, quietly, he tied Mordai’s hands and feet together before propping him up against the wall. Aund helped drag the group down to the cellar. 

Except for Mordai.

Kes squatted down in front of Mordai’s unconscious body and it hurt. It was bad enough that Mordai had left. Had replaced him. Kes let out a breath and smacked Mordai hard enough to snap his head sideways. His eyes flew open and Kes was close enough to see where the white turned into the silver blue of his irises as he groaned in pain. 

"I suppose I deserved that." Mordai tried to bring up a hand to hold his stinging cheek. When he couldn’t raise his hand he looked down from Kes’ face before sighing. "You want to know why I left, don’t you. That's why I woke up at all."

Kes pressed his lips into a tight line to keep his bottom lip from trembling. To keep himself from, saying  _ ImissyouIloveyouIcouldneverhurtyouourdaughterhasyoureyes.  _ “Perceptive.” 

He felt hollow, a sinking emptiness making its home where his heart had been. His voice sounded dead, toneless and and quiet as he asked questions that had followed him for months. Had dogged his every thought. They were questions he wasn’t sure he wanted the answers to. “Why are you here Mordai. Why did you leave." 

_ Why did you abandon me?  _ hung between them, unsaid but understood. 

"I woke up alone in an empty room.” Kes’ voice caught on the abandonment blocking his throat, “No one. Not even  _ Spero _ .” He took a breath trying to keep the walls he had built from crumbling around him but his eye contact never faltered. “I couldn't move my legs Mordai. By the time I could, they had reassigned me."

There was the briefest glimpse of a tear catching on his eyelashes where it sparkled as it froze. Mordai stared at him, too distracted to keep testing his bonds. Kes’ mouth curled into a bitter twist. "They told me we had taken the farm. They told me you  _ left _ ."


	12. But don’t get caught up love

Mordai felt guilt and anger rising through him like rain falling into a sinking boat. He let his head drop for a moment before looking back into Kes’ accusatory white eyes. "Yeah, I guess that's all they would have told you." 

Mordai bit the inside of his lip, worrying it for a second. He didn't want to tell him, but if anyone deserved to know what had happened that day, it was Kes. He stared at the corner of a simple wooden picture frame hung on the earthen walls. It held what looked like the art a toddler would give their parents and grief and fury twisted together like the world’s worst peppermint. 

"When you fell, Læra told us to keep going. She ordered us not to waste time stabilizing you.” Bitterness crept into his voice like climbing ivy as he squared his shoulders. Bitter about what he couldn’t tell, there were too many reasons to count.

_ Mama smiling. Father worn down and dying, working himself right into his grave trying to appease the Harvesters. Mari crying because Mama wasn’t here Dada wasn’t here where did they go Mori where did they go? Mari silent, dead to the world as he wrapped her in blankets and hid her in the woods. Vera standing in their kitchen looking him in the eye as she gave him an ultimatum dressed up as a choice.  _

“She said you failed. That you were  _ an acceptable loss. _ ” He snarled the words like they were poisonous. Spat them the way his grandpa had used to spit his chewing tobacco and he watched with sorrow as Kes began to put the pieces together. Kes’ face barely hid the grief and hurt the truth caused him. Mordai softened. He wanted to tell Kes it was a lie but he couldn’t, it wouldn’t be fair. "I couldn’t follow that order.” 

He searched Kes’ face for something, anything but the blank mask his face had frozen into. Somehow the blankness hurt more than an ocean of tears. 

“I  _ hated _ that she could say that. I hated how no one so much as  _ questioned _ it." He didn’t want to hurt Kes, but what was the point in dying for people who wouldn't even mourn you? 


	13. and don’t start to feel

Kes opened his mouth to reply but Mordai had stolen the words from his tongue, the breath from his lungs. He swallowed and when he spoke it came out a quiet echo. "...an acceptable loss." 

He turned the familiar words over and over. He had heard them a thousand times over, had even said them himself.  _ Acceptable loss. _ Did they always cut so deeply? 

Surely Læra wouldn’t have- _ couldn’t have _ -said them. Not when she had found him, trained him,  _ rescued  _ him. 

_ A tall figure with no shadow, lit orange and purple in the setting sun, pulling him up. Out of the gutters, out of his grave.  _ **_Come on midget._ ** _ A grip like iron and a hand like a whisper.  _ **_Keep up the good work._ ** _ Was it pride? Or something else.  _ **_Keep this up and you’ll make captain one day, maybe even territory head._ ** _ A hand that weighed less than a breeze on his shoulder, voice like the memory of a dream.  _ **_An acceptable loss._ ** _ The look of someone losing at Blacket’s Blessing, preparing to do whatever they had to to win.  _

It sat like poison in his stomach. He wanted to scream. He wanted to cry. He wanted to vomit. 

He wanted to be a good soldier. 

His hands trembled and his voice was barely a whisper but it had a spine of steel, "...you should have listened. I was careless, it was my fault."

Mordai snarled, his tail lashing angrily. With his bared fangs, the way he threw himself against the ropes holding him back, he looked like the demon so many had accused him of being. Kes straightened from his defensive posture, pride bristling like a cat with its fur on end. 

He snapped his own sharp teeth in challenge. "It was going to happen someday." 

Mordai went still as death, eyes narrowed as he sneered around his words. "You are  _ not _ an acceptable loss,” He relaxed his face enough for the frustration and rage to soften into sadness. Regret. “You never will be.” __

_ I wish you were. _

Kes heard what he hadn’t said. It would have been easier. Easier to not care, easier to move one, easier to follow orders. But Mordai didn’t love like that. His heart was too greedy, burned too brightly, to let someone he had claimed slip away. The question of Kes’ survival had never been if Mordai would try, it had only ever been if he could succeed before it was too late. 

(But then, he had never expected Mordai to leave, how could he possibly know how he loved?)

Kes felt unmoored. His world had crumbled away beneath him, there was nothing left except freefall. The impact rattled through him and he couldn't breathe because all the air was left at what had once been safe ground. He cared for Mordai, could have even loved him. But...he didn't know what he would have done if Mordai had fallen instead. 

He wanted to say he would have done the same. 

The truth was he didn't know.


	14. Remeber my darling

Mordai carried on as if this wasn’t shredding them both to bloody pieces. 

"I never wanted to be a Harvester, I was never going to stay," he swallowed. "I got complacent, and, I got attached.” He shook his head to clear it. “I stayed. I ignored how wrong it all was, told myself I would leave after one more spell, one more skill, one more secret." ~~_ One more kiss. _ ~~

Tears were freezing on Kes’ cheeks, gleaming like diamond dust and more than anything Mordai wanted to reach up, to cup his cheek and brush them away and kiss him until the hurt was nothing but a distant memory. 

"You got hurt and Læra told me to leave and I  _ couldn't.  _ Couldn't keep ignoring it anymore.” He blinked away the tears clouding his vision. His voice was horse. “I didn't want to leave you. But I couldn’t ask you to make that choice." 

He stalled, desperately hoping Kes would say something but he didn’t. Mordai felt his heart break all over. "I could have loved you, and more than anything that  _ terrified _ me.”


	15. that none of it's real

Kes tried to feel something but he was too tired, too empty, it was as if all his emotions had been wrung out of him. He wanted to go back before Mordai left and his world cracked into nothing more than jagged pieces. 

But, Mordai hadn't been happy then. Not truly. Mordai hung his head, shoulders shuddering and he might have been crying, but Kes couldn't say for certain though through his own tears.

Time was ticking down. Mordai's companions would wake up soon and Kes was either going to have to kill them all or bring them to their deaths. 

_ Or leave. Let them go, and go with them. _ An impossible solution and a painful fairytale. He was so tired. He missed knowing how things worked and where he stood. But he hadn’t ever known that, not really. Any mission could have been his last and nothing would have changed. Just another missing Harvester, written off as an _ acceptable loss _ . 

His voice was a quiet plea."What do we do now?"

  
  



	16. The dragons and damsels are all in your head

"I don't know, just-" Mordai curled in further, leaning into Kes the best he could with his hands tied.

"Just - stay." He knew that he had no right to ask for that but still he begged, greedy and heartbroken. This was the kind of love that doomed heroes. Face to face with his greatest regret, Mordai crumbled. "Please."


	17. Real life hails no heroes and romance is dead

Kes felt like he was standing on a cliff with nothing but ocean waiting far below. He closed his eyes and swallowed down the tightness in his chest. He had missed Mordai, missed him like his own beating heart had been taken away, but Mordai  _ left _ . Left while he couldn't move his legs, couldn't even summon a spell. He had left and his world had crumbled, the familiar becoming foreign and now nothing was the same. He felt sick. This was the kind of loved that shook mountains. Kes took a step back from the edge and broke his heart for a second time.“I can’t.”

"Is this orchard, out in some half-frozen desert really that important?" Mordai asked, bitterness splashed across his face. "Just walk away, the other three are already dead and gone. It's just you and one common, interchangeable _ grunt _ . Do you really think you'll win?"   


Kes pulled away from Mordai, standing with ice in his eyes and a spell at his fingertips. "Is that a threat?"   


Mordai's mouth twisted as he stared up at Kes, fire in his eyes. The silence broke like the sword of damocles, plummeting towards them. "You're going to die, Kes. Either right here or on some other mission they send you on. Do you really trust any of them to watch your back?" 

The truth glinted like the heavy blade of a guillotine, inescapable. "Waiting for death, always afraid of outliving your usefulness is no way to live. Is it worth killing for?"   
Once Kes would have said no, but he had spent years getting his hands dirty just to live another minute. The first person he had ever killed had been the child he used to be. 

This was the kind of love that snuffed out stars. 

Something scuffed against the floor and as Kes turned to face it pain flooded through him. His heart spasmed and his breath caught in his lungs and the last thing Kes Trall ever saw was Mordai crying out, just a moment to late. 

_ While I breathe, I hope. While I hope, I love. While I love, I live. _ But how can you love if you’ve never truly lived? The answer is you can’t.  Don’t you know that hero’s never get a happily ever after?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first multichapter fic I ever finished and completely posted. And lets be real, its probably the last.


End file.
